Mary Queen of Shops flagship scheme failing to make an impact
Mary Portas' government funded scheme to restore the high street has failed to have a significant impact, reports Sky News.
Portas' high street revival project received £1.2m in public funding and focused on 12 town centres.
Wolverhampton was one those chosen to pilot the scheme and received £100,000. The results were mixed, with five retail outlets being opened. One of the businesses went bust another diversified while three were successful.
Speaking to Sky News, Nick Pitt, manager of the local shopping centre, said: "A hundred thousand pounds is good value. And it rallied businesses around to come together in a very selfless way to help people get into business."
"It was quite a humbling experience. I see people who'd never had the opportunity before to have their own shop and now they have."
"And those people are still helping us now to help other people get into business. And we're determined to do it again," he added.
The government asked Portas to shake Britain's declining high street over two years ago. However, some of the retail central recommendation, such as cuts in business rates have not come to pass.
Mary Portas' CEO David Wood issued a statement to Sky News on her behalf.
It said: "We think there's some justified criticism of the way Government originally implemented the programme and the lack of infrastructure to support the town teams.
"There's also justified criticism of the way the majority of the recommendations were accepted but nothing was done – for example we spoke in the report about parking, business rates, landlords, town-centre-first planning approvals and the like but little was done."
Portas has in the past argued for controversial measures to prop up the high street. In 2011, she suggested that supermarket chains like Tesco to hand over some of their profits to help independent shops.
The management consultant was identified as someone with the expertise and personality to drive through changes to lift retailers’ fortunes. Portas, who has worked in retail for 30 years, will give a full report in the department of business, innovation and skills on how to turn around the ailing sector.
Portas started her career with a Saturday job in John Lewis. Her first full-time role was with Harrods, where she took charge of the window displays. She then moved onto the job of display manager at Topshop before, at the age of 30, she was appointed creative director at Harvey Nichols.
She drafted in younger big-name designers such as Vivienne Westwood. In 2005 Portas began writing her Shop! column for the Telegraph, and began her makeover series Mary, Queen of Shops in 2007.